The former president of Peru Alejandro Toledo demanded that the justice of the Andean country not allow his “death in prison” during an exclusive interview with EFE hours before turning himself in to the US authorities as a step prior to being extradited.
“I ask the Peruvian justice not to kill me in jail, let me fight with arguments,” added the former head of the Peruvian Executive between 2001 and 2006 after “breaking the media silence” that he has maintained for the past seven years.
Toledo, claimed by the justice of his country since the end of 2017, is charged with the alleged commission of the crimes of money laundering, collusion and influence peddling in relation to contracts awarded to the Odebrecht company for the construction of the Interoceanic Route between Brazil and Peru.
From his apartment in the town of Menlo Park (San Francisco Bay, USA), the former president settled any doubts about his delivery, scheduled for this Friday morning in a court in San José, California: “I will, I am respectful of the judge’s (Thomas S. Hixson) decision, even though I don’t share it.”
These are the last hours of Toledo under house arrest, a condition that he has enjoyed since 2020, after a year in a Californian prison, due to the dangers that the covid-19 health crisis could entail for his state of health.
Precisely that, his state of health, was the argument that he repeatedly used to paralyze the judicial process for which he is accused of having pocketed up to 35 million dollars in bribes that he would later invest in real estate in Peru.
“My health is very bad. I take 14 pills a day, I have hypertension and I suffer from the remnants of cancer (…) Just respect that, they have not tried anything and they already want to put me in jail,” Toledo said under the watchful eye of the former first lady of Peru, Eliane Karp.
The achievement of having been the first indigenous president of South America continues to be a source of pride for the politician popularly known as “El Cholo”, who assured that “that” is not forgiven because it meant “liberation from the Fujimori dictatorship” (1990-2000 ) in Peru and because it “set the precedent” so that Pedro Castillo would later arrive.
“Although I have nothing to do with him,” stressed the former president in reference to Castillo, a former president who has also been deprived of his liberty since December last year after declaring a state of emergency in a maneuver considered by many as a “self-coup.”
Despite the succession of accusations in which he finds himself immersed, Toledo affirmed that he detested corruption, stressed that he “never” received “not a single ill-gotten dollar” and compared his case with that of Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who passed 580 days in prison for a conviction that was later overturned.
“I, who have worked to earn it since I was five years old?”, the founder of the extinct Peru Posible party sneered about his ties to Odebrecht.
The case that bears the name of this Brazilian construction company is included within the plot known as Lava Jato and has been the largest corruption scandal in the history of Latin America.
Odebrecht also splashed former Peruvian presidents Alan García (1985-1990 and 2006-2011), Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018), as well as the three-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former president. Alberto Fuhimori (1990-2000).
In this sense, Toledo expressed his anger over the so-called “Effective Collaboration Agreement” by which a team of Peruvian prosecutors specialized in Lava Jato agreed with Odebrecht on a series of reparations for having benefited from public money from the Andean country.
“Why don’t they tell us the terms of that agreement? Odebrecht continues to work in the same way in Peru, even though it has another name; it avoided paying a billion dollars and another six hundred in taxes,” Toledo recounted out loud.
He answered the question himself, alleging that Peru has returned to the “dictatorship”, since the country is controlled by people close to Alberto Fujimori himself and who hold true power because “they have ties to large companies and drug trafficking.”
“The narco had never been so comfortable as now. Life in Peru today is worthless,” Toledo said to emphasize that, in this context, he feels “afraid” of the Latin American country’s prison system.
For the former president, the situation of the prisons there is “worse than that of regimes like China, Iran or Sudan” because the inmates suffer significant violations of their human rights.
In his attempt to avoid a Peruvian prison, the Andean politician urged the authorities of his country to reconsider, because escaping taking advantage of his situation of house arrest does not occur to him at any time.
“I am not a fugitive like Fujimori. I moved to the place (San Francisco Bay) where I was trained (…). I wouldn’t escape now either, that would be admitting my guilt,” Toledo concluded hours before starting “a match that does not start from zero to zero” but who, he declared, will fight “until the end”.
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